“It’s about a boy who is born normal, just like you and me. Then he witnesses a murder and becomes deaf, dumb and blind.

“He is later raped by his uncle and gets turned on to LSD.”

Tommy develops a talent for playing pinball, is miraculously healed, and goes on to become the hero of the younger generation.

A lot of the exact story line got lost during and after the show, owing to the Who’s partially-successful attempt at audience participation: That is, they tried to make the listeners go deaf, dumb and blind. In the confined space of Ronnie’s, a bandbox-sized jazz club, the overwhelming intensity of the Who’s playing left scores of people literally deaf.

As Melody Maker writer Chris Welch recounted: “Some 20 hours after the event, my ears were still singing, and I was barely able to sleep without a vision of Keith Moon thrashing like a demon swimming before me.”

Tommy, he said, underlines Townshend’s flair for “inventive lyrics and original composition, not forgetting the sense of humor and drama always evident in his work.”